Since you aren't conducting any kind of boil to extract the hop oil my understanding is that yes, you are out for the hop aroma and not any hop bitterness. With that said I know a lot of your taste is closely related to smell. So you may be "tasting" the hops due to the aroma.

If you're not satisfied with the aroma, but you're seeing flavor contribution, you could pull out the dry hops and add another charge. I'll do this with hoppy beers in the keg immediately before serving to 'reinforce' the dry hop character a bit.

Aroma also isn't as well represented in a flat beer - carbonation will help carry it. It takes a bit of practice to imagine what carbonation will bring to a flat beer.

My beer isn't even close to carbonated so that could be part of the issue. I took a small sample only two days on CO2. I will wait until it is fully carbed, re-evaluate, and if necessary add some hops to the keg. I think part of the issue may be related to a hops storage problem. They may not have been as fragrant as normal...

coastsidemike

+1 to getting flavor from dry hopping - it's significant. The larger the amount of dry hops you use, the more flavor and aroma you get. I don't think it's far off to call it 50/50 flavor/aroma.

+2;

I really didn't understand how pronounced the effect was until I started splitting my batches to experiment with dry-hopping, one for a single hop and one for a blend of two or more. IMO, unless it's for a specific traditional style, it's now one of the more important parts of the recipe. I'll save the more select, fresh hops for it.

I'm just getting into the water quality aspect; they're like two keys for the same puzzle.

Not to fire up old controversy, but one way to get (too much) flavor from dry-hopping is to hop cold and long. IME, fridge temp dry-hopping of more than a few days begins to impart tea-like/hay-like flavors along with dryness and astringency. Chew on part of a hop pellet and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Damaged the flavor of my second most recent IPA with this method, but thankfully the aroma was unscathed.

I really didn't understand how pronounced the effect was until I started splitting my batches to experiment with dry-hopping, one for a single hop and one for a blend of two or more.

Splitting is a nice idea to compare different hops and hopping rates but it might also be nice to compare to the base beer. Because you never can fully know just how much a dry-hop charge has changed the character of your batch unless you do a side by side tasting.

Along this line, I'll be splitting a 6 gallon batch of thoroughly hop-bursted ipa into two 3 gallon kegs, one that I leave alone and carb and one that I dry-hop once or twice. I'd like to see if there's as much aroma as I think there is resulting from the hopstand that the wort receives and then recognize exactly what the dry hops added.

Not too much of an issue usually. Foam out only happened once when I had the keg really really full. Normally, pellet hops just out of the freezer go in a mesh bag with some marbles into the keg with little fuss, even at full carb.

Not too much of an issue usually. Foam out only happened once when I had the keg really really full. Normally, pellet hops just out of the freezer go in a mesh bag with some marbles into the keg with little fuss, even at full carb.

+1. I've never had an issue doing it. i just add the hops in a fine mesh, weighted bag, purge a few times a few minutes apart and call it good. No volcanic or otherwise seismic events.